Failure analysis is the process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the cause of a failure and the means to prevent recurrence. It is a tool that is important both in developing new products and improving existing products.
Where failure analysis is applied to a business process, it may be used to identify a weakness which could lead to failure of the process.
Conventional failure analysis tools for evaluating a business process are best suited for understanding the impact of failure on clearly defined process steps for performing a single business function.
Many real-world processes involve multiple business functions. For example, in a technological process, each process step may relate to more than one business function. A process step may have multiple failure modes, each affecting the relevant business functions in different ways. In some instances a failure may not have a great effect on the overall goal of the process, while in other cases it may be critical.
The potential for mitigation is integral to determining the criticality of a failure. Conventional failure analysis typically focuses on root cause elimination rather than mitigation options. In some processes, particularly those involving technology, root cause elimination may not be practical and mitigation is the only option.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide apparatus and methods to electronically evaluate the criticality of a weakness in a business process. It would be desirable also to incorporate the potential for mitigation into the evaluation.